Can We Keep Him?
by wakingonprospit
Summary: Cronus gets a dog without asking Kankri about it first. A request from a tumblr anon for the ship Cronkri with the word "dogs"


"Cronus," Kankri mumbles quietly, still half asleep, "quit it..." The troll turns and rolls onto his stomach but the nuzzling at his back doesn't stop. He buries his face in his pillow, grumbling into it, "I am sleeping in his ridiculous and impractical human bed with you," he says tiredly, "the least that you can do in return is allow me to get a decent amount of sleep." He lets out a slow breath of relief when the nudging disappears, only to sit up in a fit of fury when he feels something licking his ear.

"Cronus!" he yells, only to be caught off guard by the large barkbeast that sits on the bed beside him.

The animal is fairly large with long golden fur. It seems to be very excited as it is panting heavily and wagging its tail quickly. A slightly loud bark comes from the barkbeast and he leans in to lick the troll's face again.

Kankri stares at the animal in confusion, then pulls away in disgust as it tries to lick his face. "Ew- Cronus!" he sputters out angrily, narrowing his eyes slightly at the canine and pulling the blankets of the bed up to cover his exposed chest, putting a wall between him and the intruder.

Cronus walks into the doorway, grinning happily into the room at his 'human boyfriend.' "Ey, sleeping beauty," he teases as he walks into the room. Cronus is already dressed for the day in his normal black jeans and white shirt adorning his zodiac sign. He grins as he makes his way over and sits on the side of the bed closest to the barkbeast, reaching out and laughing as it rolls onto its stomach to be pet.

Kankri's eyebrows furrow in confusion for a moment as he watches his lover pet the blonde animal. "Why is there a barkbeast in our room?" Kankri demands with a scowl, crossing his arms over the blanket.

"Morning to you too, babe," he says and then laughs quietly, looking from the dog to Kankri and adding on, "An' it's not a barkbeast Kan. It's an Earth dog." As he says this, the animal sits up quickly as if he knew that the troll was talking about him.

Kankri practically snarls. Usually he would be apologizing for not taking Cronus's human identity into consideration before speaking, but this time he was too frustrated to care. "Fine," he huffs, "Why is there a _dog_ in our room?"

Cronus pouts at Kankri and wraps his arms around the dog's neck in a light hug. "Kaaaan," he whines, "He was all lonely outside. He just wanted a friend... So I figured he could live with us." The highblood breaks into a giant grin at that, hoping that Kankri will be kind and allow for the animal to stay.

The shorter troll doesn't miss a beat with his response. "Absolutely not," he says flatly with narrowed eyes, "You can not just- just bring a barkb- dog into our hive-"

"Home." Cronus corrects him with a smug grin.

Kankri seethes quietly for a moment before finishing, "Without talking it over with me first!"

Cronus frowns and pets the dog softly behind the ears. "Oh come on," he pleads, "Kankri Junior likes it here."

"Do not call him that," Kankri retorts quickly.

"Fiiiine," The sea-dweller said before sighing loudly. "Can we pleeease keep him though?" he begs, "Isn't he cute? You wouldn't want to kick him out, would you Kan?"

The other troll's mouth is set in a hard line. He knows that his boyfriend is trying to guilt him into allowing him to keep the dog. He had absolutely no problem with putting the animal outside, and he definitely did not think that it was cute. He considered dogs to be disgusting beasts. They shed, drool, relieve themselves wherever they want to, and they created messes for their owners. Cronus could barely clean up after himself, which led the Cancer to believe that he would be responsible for cleaning up after the dog.

Kankri opens his mouth to respond with a firm 'no' but before he can get it out, Cronus is pouting at him with watery eyes. Kankri knew better. He knew that this was one of the highblood's guilt trips and he would not fall for it.

"Fine," Kankri says with a grumble of defeat, but before the Ampora can attack him in a hug, he is quickly adding on, "But you have to take care of him by yourself. That means feeding him, walking him, cleaning up after h-" He is being cut off with a messy kiss before he can even finish his sentence.

"Yeah, no, I got you babe," Cronus says happily, "He won't be any trouble for you at all. It'll be like he ain't even here."

A week later, Kankri really hasn't had any trouble with the dog, which Cronus had decided to name Trident. Trident thankfully doesn't bark quite as much as Kankri had been anticipating, and he hasn't done anything too terribly bad yet. Granted, he does get hair on the furniture and needs to be walked every once and a while, but Cronus has been keeping up with the canine fairly well, so much so that he has been spending a bit less time with his boyfriend. This left Kankri to not have to deal with the canine most of the time, except for days like today.

It was late afternoon and Cronus had gone to the local VerticalBarrier-Mart for some groceries, leaving Kankri at home with Trident.

The mutant blood was in his room, messaging his morail, Porrim, on his husktop when he hears Trident scratching at something in the other room. Quickly, the troll tells his friend that he will return shortly, before getting up and walking into the adjacent room. He stands in the doorway for a moment, going quiet so that he may listen out for the noise that he had heard before.

Kankri stands there, still and silent for almost a minute before he continues to walk into the room. He rounds the couch to see Trident laying on the floor beside the coffee table. The troll was about to head back to his room until he sees one of his favorite books, lying on the ground by the dog's head with obvious bite marks and slobber across the spine of it. The mutant blood's eyes widen in horror at what the animal had been doing. All at once his eyes are brimming with tears and he is running at the animal to shoo him away from the book.

Trident is quick to get out of the troll's way, standing up and running under the coffee table quickly in an attempt to escape.

Kankri drops to his knees quickly and picks up the book from the ground, inspecting it for any serious damage. Thankfully, as far as he can see, no harm has come to the individual pages of the novel, so it is still readable. But unfortunately, due to the spine of the book being damaged, the pages are sliding out of place.

Kankri glares over at the animal with teary eyes, closing up the book and taking it to the table and setting it down. He wanted for Cronus to be able to see what the animal had done before he tried to fix the spine. Once done with that, he goes and sits on his bed, wiping tears from his eyes and curling up to hug his knees and wait for the highblood to come home.

Not five minutes after he had sat down, he hears whining come from the foot of his bed. Kankri looks over the side of the bed to see Trident looking up at him from his place on the ground. His eyes are locked on Kankri's but he keeps his head resting against his paws. His ears are pushed back and his usually wagging tail has stilled. He continues whining quietly, knowing that he has done something wrong.

"Go away," Kankri glares at the barkbeast to no avail. The animal just sits there and keep whining. "I'm mad at you!" The troll fusses, trying to keep his face set in a disapproving scowl, "That isn't going to work on me!"

Cronus shifts the brown paper bag onto his hip as he walks back up the steps to the porch of his human house. He went out a little over an hour ago to get groceries for the week. He had offered to do the shopping this week to make last night up to Kankri. Never in his entire existence has he thought that he would pass up sex with his matesprit to spend time with an animal.

Once he walks into their home, he thinks that it is a bit odd that he was not greeted with a mound of fur running at him, or his matesprit greeting him. Nonetheless, he busies himself with putting away the groceries, then walks through the house in search of his boyfriend and pet. He checks the bedroom first and furrows his eyebrows in confusion before smiling at the sight before him.

At first glance, Cronus can only see Trident unconscious on the bed, sprawled out on his side and legs laying out before him. Then he notices a bit of red sweater from behind the mass of golden fur.

Cronus moves closer to get a better view. He grins wider as he notices how Kankri is hugging the animal and practically curling up on him in his sleep.

Without any further delay, Cronus is sliding his jeans off and crawling into the bed with Kankri and Trident, wrapping his arms around his matesprit and kissing the back of his head.


End file.
